


All of Me

by KChasm



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, 涼宮ハルヒ | Suzumiya Haruhi - All Media Types
Genre: Chameleon Arch, Crossover, Gen, Kyon is the Doctor, Minor Editing, Regeneration, strange quality, uploaded for completion's sake, younger me wants a dopeslap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 00:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10605507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: Kyon is running out of time.Or maybe time is running out of Kyon.(Originally partially uploaded 2008, LJ.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, temporarily lacking an internet connection, I decided to wander the nooks and crannies of my laptop only to discover that 18-year-old me apparently wrote Doctor Who/Haruhi fanfic. I have no memory of this.
> 
> Also, I've had multiple laptops since 2008.
> 
> I don't _know_ , man. I don't know.

I'd started hearing it every night, during those fleeting second between wake and sleep. A voice—or a whisper, or something like a whisper, that seemed to rise up from someplace inside my own mind:

 _You're going to be caught right in the center of it. Better prepare._  

“Better prepare”—two words, but they were dreadful enough. Those two words were a threat. Somewhere, somehow, someone was doing their best to introduce some chaos into my neatly ordered life. And I'd had enough of chaos at the start of it, thank you.

For weeks I continued my normal life with those words hovering around my head. I was...not afraid, not exactly, but apprehensive. What would it be, I wondered? What sort of event would reduce my carefully structured existence to shambles? And when? Because it _was_ coming. There was no doubt about that.

A normal life—I was fine with that, I thought, looking to the skies. Couldn't it stay this way?

A normal life—

I _was_ fine with that, wasn't I?

And then, one day, that _when_ I had been dreading arrived.

* * *

“Kyon! Kyon! Wake up!”

Another morning, another round of trying to crack the meaning behind the voice in my head. Something was different today, though.

Keeping my eyes closed, I felt around with my hands, searching for a pillow to use as a shield against my relative's attack. A fruitless task—she'd already taken my pillow. It was what she was using to buffet me about, in fact.

“Kyon! Mom says you have to get up for school!”

And she couldn't have found a gentler way to do it? Something that hadn't involved smothering me with my own headrest?

“Kyon!”

No good feigning sleep, either. She'd just keep at it till she was sure I was awake.

How was that for normality?

My sister (if I could call her that), content to see my will had been crushed, ran from my room, giggling madly to herself all the while.

I didn't hate mornings. I was far too easygoing for that—at least, I thought I was. Other people tended to call me melancholy when they thought I wasn't listening in. Maybe they were right. It was a bit difficult, looking at yourself. Too easy to overlook the big things. At the very least, though, I was rather good at looking on the bright side in the face of life's minor crises—not to blow my own trumpet.

But eye of the storm aside—

I didn't _hate_ mornings, but I didn't particularly like them, either.

Certainly, there were reasons enough for any boy to dislike mornings. The grogginess, for one. And the fact that mornings were followed often by school, a heavily flawed (if well-meaning) institution. In my case, however, what I disliked the most about waking up was—well, the waking up.

Already, that pleasant dream I'd been having was so much dust. Even if I concentrated and squinted hard, I could only remember the occasional detail. There'd been an old man—an old man's voice—pointing out things to another, younger man...

What sort of things?

Couldn't remember that part, unfortunately. Dust.

A more superstitious sort of fellow would have stated, with all certainly, that the dream “meant something.” Me? I was a realist. Dreams and sense ran perpendicular to each other. I knew that.

Besides, if the dream _had_ meant something, it definitely didn't deserve attention, not with its choice of cryptic imagery to convey a message. If a chair with a panda on it was supposed to signify anything more than a comfortable place to sit...

Well, it was lost on me.

In any case, sitting around wasn't going to do me any good, especially not today. I rose from my bed and began to change out of my pajamas. It was the first day of senior high school, and if I didn't hurry I'd be late.

* * *

Leaning back in my desk, my head hanging upside-down, I looked over the girl standing behind me. 'If anyone here is an alien, a time traveler, slider, or an esper'...

I couldn't shake her words out. They floated through my head in pieces, a bit like a tune heard long ago but only now resurfacing.

The mind never forgets, does it? Not really. Not for the first time, I wondered if I were better off...

But I had better things to think over, especially when I noticed Haruhi looking at _me_. Must've caught my gaze. Sharp girl. The wisest choice of action would have been to ignore her, just as everybody else in the classroom was busy doing (or not doing, rather), but there was something about her—something about what she'd said—that annoyed me terrifically.

So I spoke.

That might have been a slight miscalculation on my part.

“That's a bit too much, isn't it? That bit about normal humans...” I trailed off as her face contorted—apparently, all I'd achieved was making her doubly as annoyed with me as I'd been with her. Triply, even. A joke, perhaps? People liked jokes. “Any species that’s developed enough to make jelly sweets can't be too bad,” I finished lamely.

Haruhi, unfortunately, didn't seem to like jokes. “Are you an alien?” she asked instead, glare obviously expecting the answer no.

“Yes,” I answered.

What can I say? Never give your audience what they expect.

Haruhi didn't seem to like the unexpected, either, though. She was the very image of rage, there, towering over me with her hands slammed flat on her desk. “Don't mock me,” she hissed.

“I'm not. I'm really an alien,” Or possibly insane, badgering her like that. I didn't quite understand why I was doing it myself. The words seemed to flow out on their own, a bit like a river. Or a song. Or vomit. “I'd take you to my planet, but I don't think you'd enjoy it too much. Nice view, but the company's a bit rubbish.” I affected a note of wistfulness. It wasn't difficult. “The sky's orange, and the trees grow in silver, so when the second sun rises up in the north and hits the leaves just right, it almost looks like the entire planet's caught on fire. Breathtaking if you can get there, but I can't say you're too likely to be let through customs...”

I trailed off, again, when I saw the new look on Haruhi's face. The girl still looked a bit glare-y, but now—now, she looked more than a little invested in the tale I was spinning. Like a child tucked in bed, listening as their parent read them fairy tales out of an old picture book. I didn't like that look. There was a fine line between being clever and being cruel, and I wasn't sure where I'd find my feet if I looked.

How had I even gotten this far? I didn't think I was that good of a storyteller. But if I closed my own eyes, I could almost see it myself, the sky—the forest—the light shimmering, the light, the light—

“Also,” I said, quickly, brightly, “everything I just said was a lie. Complete fiction, every word of it. Sorry!”

Haruhi was a bit incensed.

I suppose I couldn't blame her.

* * *

My entry into Haruhi's motley crew was all but inevitable after that. I was the second member, dragged out of the classroom by my tie, protests unheard. When she finally let go, the first thing I did was pat myself down to make sure no part of me had been lost along the way: suit, shirt, trousers, tie (thankfully unstretched), wallet, watch—and two arms, two legs, and a head still firmly attached.

Good.

It wasn't long before our third, fourth, and fifth members were inducted as well. Our third member, Yuki Nagato, had actually been a member of the Literature Club before Haruhi had claimed the room (and its sole individual), like Japan's very own version of Marco Polo. Mikuru Asahina met a similar, pitiable fate—although a year old than Haruhi, she, too, was somehow displaced from her original club to join the SOS Brigade. With her meek manner and submissive personality, she was no match for somebody with a personality as forceful as Haruhi's.

And then there was the transfer student, Itsuki Koizumi.

Frankly, Itsuki bothered me.

Itsuki was well-dressed, well-groomed, and exceedingly polite towards everybody—traits irritating enough on their own, of course, but what I really couldn't stand was the way he smiled. There was something off about it, something that rang false, and it seemed to me that I was the only one who could tell.

Also, he reminded me of myself.

It was very peculiar. We acted nothing alike except for the care directed towards our clothing (Itsuki was the only other boy in school who bothered buttoning up his jacket), but when I looked at Itsuki it was a little like looking into a broken mirror and seeing a shattered version of myself smile back through the cracks.

Additional truths were soon revealed. Yuki Nagato was an alien, Mikuru was a time traveler from the future, and...

“I am what you call an esper,” Itsuki said, that smile on his face.

“Yes, I know,” I replied, and sipped my coffee.

Across the table, the corner of Itsuki's mouth twitched.

“Well, actually, I didn't know you were an esper, specifically,” I admitted, “but I figured you were unusual in some way. Like the others.”

Itsuki chuckled. I wondered what he was hiding, underneath that face of his. “Ah. So, you noticed that the other members of the SOS Brigade were also not exactly normal.”

“It was a little obvious, yeah.” I smiled back. “I'm a bit surprised that nobody else has noticed.”

But after all, the human race has an amazing capacity for self-deception.

* * *

There was a part of me that knew I should have felt more—something. Awe, maybe. After all, in the sum of a few short days I'd met an alien, a time traveler, and an esper, and learned that a classmate of mine was walking around with the powers of a god at her disposal. Anybody in my place would have been overwhelmed.

But even when Ryouko towered over me, knife in hand, I felt nothing except for a strange sort of weariness. Melancholy, again. A sort of...

 _Well, go on, then—it's only another face._  

Wasn't that strange? I cared (of course I cared; she was trying to _stab_ me), but...

I didn't like to think about it, afterwards. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

* * *

“Kyon! This has to be a mysterious event!”

Haruhi was talking about Ryouko's sudden “transfer” away from our school. She wasn't the only one—it seemed to be the _soupe du jour_. The class was abuzz with theories, though most of them were on the mundane side (“perhaps it has to do with her father's work,” for example).

I, of course, knew better. I had seen what had happened to Ryouko. So, all I did was glance at Haruhi out of the corner of my eye and hope she was working on a better nickname.

“First a mysterious transfer student coming in, then a girl mysteriously transferring out. There has to be something fishy going on.”

I nodded and smiled. “Itsuki was transferred to this school on purpose, and Ryouko was deleted because she refused to conform to the orders of the alien overmind.”

It would have been simple enough for Haruhi to take my word for it, but of course, like the human being she was, she rejected my revelations with a growl and a glare. Really, why was I even there? My presence wasn't doing anybody any good at all.

Haruhi's musings continued: “There are some rather fishy things about Asakura, too. She doesn't seem to have attended the local junior high.” She punctuated the statement with a triumphant expression, as if daring me to be the Watson to her Sherlock.

Well, why not? I'd always liked Watson. There are plenty of people who put stock into cleverness, but ordinary outshines it, every time. “I didn't go to the local junior high, either,” I pointed out. “Does that mean I'm an alien?”

“Alien?”

“Like Ryouko.”

And again, just like a human being, she ignored the important part to fix on the details: “Why didn't _you_ go?” she asked.

“I didn't live here.”

Haruhi's reaction was strange. Her attention was piqued, no doubt, but her expression was oddly incredulous. “Where did you live before?”

I shrugged, and put my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “Oh, out in the countryside,” I said. “Nowhere very notable. Just a lot of grass, and very little to do. You wouldn't have liked it.”

“So you only moved here just before you started high school?”

I didn't like this conversation. Talking about my childhood—even my very recent childhood—made me feel a bit uncomfortable. No, more than a bit. Suddenly, I wanted this discussion to be over more than anything else. “Yes, I suppose you could say I transferred in as well. It was my parents' idea. They shipped me down to a distant relative, and here I am!” I spread my arms, adding some punctuation of my own. Or, er, one arm, so only half a punctuation mark, there.

Comma?

Haruhi seemed to grudgingly accept my explanation, abridged as it was. “Well,” she said, “I asked for Asakura's old address before she moved. I'm going to have a look after school. You're coming as well.”

The last part was an order, not a request, unfortunately.

* * *

The dreams became worse.

Before, they'd been half-formed, barely visions: an image of a man, perhaps, half his face overtaken by a green growth. Or a quick flash of dull, lifeless eyes set in plastic skin.

But suddenly, there was plot. Suddenly, my dreams weren't so much imagery as adventure—and I was the protagonist, nimbly avoiding danger by the skin of my teeth, regularly chiming in with some witticism, narrowly managing to triumph over some terrible enemy—

The protagonist, but not the hero.

Movies never linger too long on villains, once they've died. They turn even less attention to a villain's henchmen, who are lucky to even have names. My dreams did not afford me this luxury.

They were only dreams, but—

Even in my dreams, I knew. Nobody who caused so much death and destruction could ever be a hero.

Then, the night before Tanabata, the dream changed again.

Somewhere, fire and metal. The sound of machinery locking up, coming loose. Making the wrong turn and finally being unable to talk myself out of it. Something between fear, regret, and relief.

Time borrowed, returned.

And then I woke to my sister's shouting, every centimeter of me covered in sweat.

* * *

“I...I'm sorry, but I hoped you could come with me to a place.” 

On that day, after school, Mikuru said this to me.

I tilted my head, peering slightly downwards at the shy, embarrassed girl, and smiled. “Are you asking me out?”

It was only a joke, but Mikuru immediately turned two shades redder and began stammering wildly. “N...no, it's not like that...I was hoping that...um, you'd be able to come with me to...to three years ago.”

Three years ago? She wanted me to go to three years ago?

But that meant...that meant...

Mikuru was still talking, but I wasn't listening anymore. “Time travel...” I murmured out loud. Time travel. I'd known she was a time traveler, but...

Time travel.

There was something important about that. Time travel. Time travel. Time—

“What? Um, yes...yes, time travel.”

Mikuru's repeating of my offhand comment broke me out of my trace, and I took my hands out of my pockets to wipe at my eyes. “Oh, sorry. Just zoned out for a moment there. So, time...time travel?”

“Yes...”

“Well, alright then.” I laughed quietly to myself, feeling oddly victorious. “Where've you got your booth?”

Mikuru looked up at me confusedly. “W...what?”

“Your booth. Your...the thing you use, so that you can travel through time.”

“Um...I don't have anything like that...”

“Oh.” The euphoria faded instantly. My chest felt hollow. It was almost as if I'd been given an early Christmas present, only to have it yanked out of my hands moments after I’d unwrapped it. “Oh. Well.”

Mikuru wasn't allowed to show me the device she used to travel through time (“Classified information,” she said), so I had to sit facing away from her and close my eyes. I could hear her muttering to herself behind me as she fiddled with something, though. Whatever the thing was, it was handheld.

Probably some sort of vor—

And then the world fell away.

* * *

 

I blinked. 

Then I blinked again, just in case.

Everything was exactly the same as before the jump, and yet, slightly different. Nothing a less observant person would have noticed, just a layer of dust that Haruhi had— _would_ wipe clean, and a few items not yet in their usual spots—or rather, what would _later_ be considered...

That was the main reason time travel could be so disorienting: the verb tenses tended to go every way until you weren't sure if you were yet to do something or if you already had. Er, if you were going to do something in the past in the future?

“Y...you're already awake?”

“Huh?” I turned my head quickly to the side and saw Mikuru standing behind me, an unsure expression on her face, holding something that caught the light between the fingers of her right hand.

Wait a minute.

I sprang away from her, landing awkwardly against the clubroom wall. The object in her hands was—a small syringe.

A small, empty syringe.

There was a tiny, throbbing pain on the back of my neck, and something else—plaster?

Mikuru looked at the object in her hand as well, wide-eyed. “It was supposed to be longer. I don't understand....”

“Mikuru?”

“You...you should still be unconscious...”

 _Because it's failing,_ that whisper in my head almost sang. _It's been leaking out for a while now, but only lately has it really started to go. And now you hopped through time so it's even worse because you understand, don't you?_

“Mikuru—what—what was in that syringe?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but couldn't help sounding a little frantic.

Mikuru had the decency to look ashamed. “I...I had to...because I can't let you know the methods of traveling through time. I'm sorry.” She looked down at her feet, and then back at my face again, still wearing that same dazed expression. “It's...strange, though. This should have...for an hour, I mean. But...I don't think you were affected at all...”

_That's because it's failing. Substandard material. Not your fault. You couldn't help it but now you're here but you must hurry, you must hurry up and remember—_

“Shut up.” I mumbled.

“Eh?”

“No—not you.” I made a noise of frustration in the back of my throat. I could feel my fist clenching and unclenching almost involuntarily, tucked into my coat pocket where Mikuru couldn't see.

Was I going mad?

“So why did you take me here?” I asked Mikuru—too loudly. She jumped, squeaking, and I quickly lowered my voice. “Sorry. Why did you take me here?”

She fiddled with her fingers uncomfortably, giving the same impression that she always had: that of a skittish, frightened Time Agent.

But I noticed that the syringe was gone, even though I'd only glanced away for a second. Less, even.

“Um...I wasn't given exact instructions, but...”

“But?”

“I'm supposed to tell you to go to the school courtyard...and then, there are more instructions, afterwards...but first, you have to go to the courtyard.”

Well, what could I do, then? I went. 

* * *

 

The courtyard was empty when I arrived. It was also surrounded by a chain link fence, a portion of which swung open—or would have, rather, if it hadn't been locked.

“Great,” I muttered to myself sarcastically, my shoes slipping against metal as I attempted to illegally enter the premises. “She couldn't have done something like give me a key, could she? No, just ‘go to the courtyard.’” Go to the courtyard. And then what?

One of the chain links at the top of the fence poked me in the stomach, and I grunted, continuing my stream of complaints. “I should just go back and—”

And then I lost my grip and fell.

(On the other side of the fence, luckily.)

The back of my head slammed against the ground, making a sound not unlike two halves of a coconut being clapped, and sending a shock through my skull that made my teeth clatter.

As I lay there, looking up at the evening sky, I couldn't help but think that I was the victim of some cosmic joke.

The stars, just starting to appear, blinked down from the evening sky. Mocking me.

Everything was mocking me. “Cosmic joke? More like...cosmic hidden camera show, that's what this is.”

_But this one turned out lovely._

Something in me—more than one something in me, in fact—snapped with a noise that only I could hear. It was long, low toll of a bell, like something from a funeral—

_Which is strangely fitting, since you're dying, aren't you? One dangerous leak can be as deadly as another—_

“Who are you,” I asked the darkness, “and why are you in my mind?”

And then Haruhi kicked me in the head. 

* * *

 

It wasn't the Haruhi I knew, not Brigade Chief Haruhi Suzumiya. This Haruhi was three years younger and hadn't met me yet.

It was the first time Haruhi had met me, except it wasn't the first time I'd met Haruhi, since I'd already was going to meet her three years later for the second very first time.

The verb tenses were enough to give me a bloody headache, as if the smack against the asphalt hadn't been enough. Oh yes, and getting kicked in the head. I'd nearly forgotten about that.

I looked up at the younger Haruhi indignantly. “You kicked me in the head!” I pointed out, just a little bit irked. “I can't believe you kicked me in the head. Why did you kick me in the head?”

“Be quiet!” Haruhi kindly requested I keep silence, please-thank-you-very-much, and kicked me in the head again. “If you don't be quiet, I'll call the cops and tell them you're an intruder!” She kicked me in the head a third time and then, satisfied that I'd surely learned my lesson, stepped back, allowing me to pick myself off the ground.

“Same Haruhi as before, definitely.” I rolled my eyes as I rose, shakily, to my feet. “Really, you don't do things halfway, do you? Can't bother with a written request, oh, no, got to kick a man while he's down—”

Wait.

Huh. I must have landed harder than I thought. My soliloquies were supposed to stay on the inside of my head.

I leaned to the side, looking around Haruhi who was busy glaring at me (as she was wont to do). “And what is that?”

That was some chalk. A lot of chalk, actually. A great scribble of chalk that trailed all about in meaningless loops and curves and eventually led to a chalk-drawing machine. “Oh, is this what you're busy with?” I said. “It's...ah...”

To be totally honest, it was kind of stupid-looking.

“It's impressive. Very interesting. It's not the Nazca Lines, not by a long shot, but little is, you know.”

 _They really are landing strips, you know. Never actually used them myself, of course, but I have admired them on more than one occasion._ _Beautiful enough for that._

“Who are you, and why do you know my name?”

I shook my head—hard. That voice, again. That damned voice, popping in and out, saying whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. This was my life. He couldn't just...

Wait, what had she just said? Oh, right, I wasn’t supposed to know her name yet. Oops.

“Oh, I'm a time traveler, you see.” Something else that was supposed to stay unsaid popped out of my mouth, and I mentally cursed—but my attention was quickly caught by something else. “Huh, this drawing is wrong.”

And before she could reply, I grabbed the chalk-drawing machine and ran.

* * *

I thought that she'd start throwing a tantrum at me altering her drawings, but oddly enough she only watched me as I ran every which-way, pulling the machine behind me. Maybe she thought that I knew what I was doing. 

I didn't know what I was doing, of course. I didn't even know why I was doing what I was doing—why I'd suddenly gotten the urge to correct her scrawl. After all, how would I know if it was wrong or not?

But it was wrong, and I somehow knew it. Even as I tried to convince myself that the route I followed around the asphalt was random, I could feel something guiding me, guiding my hands—steering me, controlling me, like a marionette.

God, I was scared. What if it never stopped? What if the voice in my head never stopped? It was the voice in my head that was guiding me now—somehow I knew this, too. But what if it ran me forever, until I simply died on my feet?

_Long Walk. Battle Royale. You just keep on going while everyone dies around you—no rush. That's how your life is. Always has been. Always—_

And then, very suddenly, it stopped.

I fell backwards over my own feet and sat there in the dimming light, looking over my “masterpiece.”

I could barely see it. But I could see it.

I could see it, and suddenly, I understood.

This meaningless chalk scribble, this nonsense—it had a meaning to it. It wasn't nonsense at all, but some kind of writing—

Except of course not. What kind of writing could it be? It certainly wasn't Japanese, and it certainly wasn't English, and it wasn't Hindi or Russian or Korean or Farsi or any of a thousand different languages I didn't—shouldn't have known, though it did look a little close to Greek except it wasn't Greek and how did I know that, _how did I know that?_

It was some unearthly language that looked more at home in some geometry class somewhere, made up of lines and double lines and circles and triangles, and it said ‘I am here.’

It said ‘I am here.’

‘I am here.’

 _I am here._  

Haruhi was saying something, but I didn't hear her. Her voice was drowned out by the shouting whisper that ran through my head.

 _Open it. Open it. Open it—you_ must _open it, you must—_

 _It's been too long and you_ must open it _—_

Open what?

 _You must—it_ must _be opened—it_ wants _to be opened—_

Open _what?_

And he answered:

_Right coat pocket—right coat jacket pocket—whenever you're nervous, whenever you're scared you stick your hand there—right there—_

_Like a babe for its blanket, like a dog for its bone. Coat pocket—pocket—pocket!_

I looked down, afraid of what I might see.

And my hand was there, of course. Even as I'd stared into nothingness, trying to make sense of the world, my hand had already dipped into my coat pocket, and in that hand was something round and smooth that had always been there before.

I took it out of my pocket.

It was a pocketwatch.

It was a pocketwatch with a hinged front cover, a relic long since made obsolete by wristwatches and cellphones.

_It's a nice life, you understand, a nice wish-life, a nice could-have-been should-have-been dream—_

_But you’re running away from something that’s two steps behind you and you need to face facts, because no matter how far you run—_

_Right?_

_It'll always catch you in the end._

_Now, open it._

And then he flipped open the lid.

* * *

I understood. Finally, I understood. 

It had never been Kyon with the voice in his head. No, if anything, it had been the voice with Kyon in his head—

I slipped the pocketwatch back into my coat pocket and turned to leave. There were some things that needed to be done, now that all the right pieces had fallen into my lap like this.

I was ridiculously lucky.

Or was it luck at all? Perhaps all these events were partly orchestrated by a future me. Time travel was tricky like that, tricky in a perfectly lovely way.

“Now, let's see...” I muttered to myself, looking up at the night sky. The stars weren't mocking me anymore, now that I knew. No, they were cheering me on.

“While I'm here, I wonder if...” I broke off with a sudden bark of laughter as something occurred to me. Of course. This was about the time that my sonic screwdriver had gone missing, wasn't it? An absolutely terrible person, that was who I was. Couldn't I at least leave a note?

I knew what time to go to and how to get there. This time, I would be prepared.

Would Mikuru let me use her vortex manipulator, I wondered? Did she even call it a vortex manipulator? Maybe she was a different kind of Time Agent altogether. Complications, complications—I'd burn those bridges when got to them.

But I felt a little bad, leaving Mikuru to the mercy of her Organization. I hoped she wouldn't be punished too badly. How could she have foreseen this, after all?

An idea: perhaps, just perhaps, if she didn't mind, I might just let her accompany me.

“Hey!”

I paused. Haruhi. I'd almost forgotten about Haruhi. I turned my head to look at her small form.

“Coming here, just to mess with a chalk-drawing machine and leave—that's suspicious behavior, isn't it? Who are you, anyway?”

She couldn't see it in the dark, but I smiled.

“Oh, yes, me. I'm the Doctor!”

“Doctor? Doctor who?”

I didn't answer. I was already gone.

An extra picture in a flip book—ha!

An extra page could change everything.


	2. Chapter 2

And then gunfire.  
  
A coin flip of a decision, too wrong, too late.

* * *

I'd learned, after year 100 trillion: always carry a spare vortex manipulator with you. It'd taken a while for me to actually get ahold of one, but I'd managed in the end.

The TARDIS would have taken me outside—or even inside—a hospital. She was like that. Whenever I was in trouble, she always knew exactly where to take me.  
  
A vortex manipulator, however, was a bit—rougher.  
  
I materialized in the middle of a park, during the middle of the night. It was a nice place. Lots of good, green grass. For a fleeting moment I thought that I'd made it.  
  
Then I cleared my throat and felt something trickle from the corner of my mouth.  
  
“Well, that was certainly a close one, wasn't it?” I laughed bitterly. It would have been better to stay there and die, really. But instead, I'd...I'd...  
  
I'd done something terribly stupid and terribly foolish, even for me. Had I locked up the TARDIS door? But they'd get into it if they really wanted—unless I could get there first, and—  
  
The world spun around my head for a moment, and I brought a hand up to my chest, counting the holes. One, two, three, four—I got up to nine before I stopped counting. Too many for even me to survive. It was a wonder I was even standing right now—  
  
My legs gave, and I realized: ah, delayed reaction—  
  
It hurt to breathe.  
  
“I'm sorry,” I mumbled into the ground.

When I woke up, I had a new face.

* * *

 

For two years I wandered Japan alone, no destination in mind. I simply picked a direction and began walking until I reached the Pacific Ocean, then turned around and walked away until I was at the Pacific Ocean again. Back and forth, back and forth, north, east, south, and west.  
  
I took on the odd job here and there, but nothing permanent, of course. That was my life, summed up in two words: nothing permanent.  
  
Nishinomiya to Shizuoka to Niigata to Minamisouma to Nikaho to Goshogawara, and then all the way back to Nishinomiya again. I always returned to Nishinomiya.  
  
This incarnation was less prone to wandering, maybe? I had to watch out, or else I'd end up actually settling down, and then what kind of cosmic hobo would I be? Hell, I was barely making usual hobotry, let alone the cosmic kind.  
  
I sat on a park bench, my hands in my jacket pockets. I'd ended up having to buy new clothes to replace my bloodstained ones. It’d taken a good amount of time to save up enough money for what I’d wanted (Oh, how I badly missed the TARDIS' wardrobe!), but eventually, I walked out of a store, navy blue suit and red tie in hand.  
  
No one would mistake me for a salaryman, though. I looked too young for that. Odd, the incarnations seemed to be getting younger and younger—but that was only coincidence, of course. Probably.  
  
Well, maybe it was a good idea for me not to die for a while.  
  
Well, I'd certainly have the opportunity to stay alive—my vortex manipulator was broken, smashed to a point where even I couldn't fix it. I'd landed on it right before I'd regenerated. Stupid of me. At least I still had my sonic screwdriver.  
  
In any case: for now, there was nothing I could do but live a boring human life.  
  
I closed my eyes and laughed bitterly. I did that a lot, lately. Something of the new regeneration?  
  
And then I opened my eyes again when I felt a tugging at my arm.  
  
“Hey, Mister! Mister!” The source of the voice was a girl—a very small girl, in pigtails. She was about ten years old, or about, judging from the way she looked. Of course, the way she looked possibly meant very little—I was around nine hundred years old, after all, and I only looked about fifteen.  
  
“Mister!” The girl tugged at my hand again. She was smiling, one of those bright sunny smiles that too many human beings lost the ability to make once they hit adolescence.  
  
“Yes?” I said.  
  
“Are you an alien?”  
  
I looked down at the girl, feeling the closest I'd felt to “stunned” in a long time. It was nice to be reminded every every now and then: children were intuitive when they were still young and the doldrums of reality hadn't yet drummed their brains into mashed potatoes.  
  
“Yes,” I said, settling my face in what I hoped was a warm smile (I still wasn't used to this face, despite the fact that I'd had it for two years. It had the tendency to look bored no matter what I tried with it). “Yes, I'm an alien.”  
  
“That's so cool!”  
  
I very much agreed.

* * *

The girl came back the next day. I wondered where her parents were. Maybe she lived somewhere nearby?  
  
“Mister Alien, what planet are you from?”  
  
"Gallifrey. You ever hear of Gallifrey?" Of course she hadn't, but it was nice to pretend to expect a 'yes' answer to that kind of question now and then.  
  
"Nope!" She laughed. "Are you trying to go back to Ga...Ga...Ga-ru-ri-fa-rei?"  
  
Oh, dear. That was a bit of a mangling, there. "Gal-li-frey." I corrected her.  
  
"Ga-ru..." She screwed up her face, trying to properly pronounce the foreign syllables. "...furei."  
  
"Gal-li-frey."  
  
"Ga-ri-fu-ei."  
  
"Close enough." I shrugged, and leaned back against the thoroughly uncomfortable wooden bench. Maybe it was about time for me to buy a cushion, or something...  
  
"Are you trying to get back to Garifuei? I saw a movie like that. It had an alien in it, too! He called his planet, and the other aliens came and picked him up!" She raised her arms above her head, making a 'whoosh' sound, then began running in circles, mimicking as best as she could a spaceship's flight.  
  
The question was an uncomfortable one.  
  
"I'm afraid I won't be able to do anything like that," I heard myself say as I smiled sadly.  
  
"Eh?" The girl immediately brought her antics to a halt, refocusing her attention on the question she had asked just seconds ago. "You can't? Why not?"  
  
'Because there isn't any Gallifrey left,' I didn't say. Rather: "Oh, it doesn't have the same sort of phone service as Japan, you see. It'd be like chalk and cheese!"  
  
Unfortunately, my jest failed to have the humorous response I had hoped for. Instead the girl just stared at me blankly, uncomprehending.  
  
"You know, because you can't write on a chalkboard with cheese. Well, you can, but other people tend to get angry if you do."  
  
The stare continued.  
  
"And, you know, you're...you're not supposed to eat chalk, not unless you have the sort of digestive system to handle it..."  
  
Stare.  
  
I looked away, slightly embarrassed, and made a quick mental note concerning the use of English idioms in Japan.

* * *

Of course, despite my title of “Mister Alien,” the girl's mother didn't believe me to be anything more than a normal teenager. I didn't mind—that was just the way human beings were.  
  
"Don't you have school?" she asked me one day, as I taught her daughter how to make a paper fortune teller.  
  
"Hold on, fold the other way around. You need to be able to reach the pockets. Sorry, what?"  
  
"Don't you have school?"  
  
_No, I'm actually an alien being from a distant planet who only looks like a teenager. I've actually surpassed what you would consider_ _university_ _-level material._  
  
"Founder's day."  
  
"I see."  
  
It would have been wise to avoid that park bench from then on, what with a responsible-looking woman having taken note of my face, but I was never a wise man.  
  
Well, actually, I had been, once, but that had been a good many faces ago.  
  
"What about yesterday?"  
  
Uh-oh.  
  
"Yesterday?" Apparently this woman had been watching me for some time. "Ah, yesterday the boiler room flooded."  
  
"Day before that?"  
  
"Bomb threat."  
  
"What school do you go to?"  
  
"Mom!" Luckily for me, the interrogation was interrupted by one small girl. "He doesn't have to go to school! He's an alien!"  
  
I very quickly agreed. "That's right! It's a shame, but they haven't set up an interplanetary exchange program yet!"  
  
She let the matter drop, but it was obvious that she didn't believe either of us.

* * *

 

"Well, as you might have figured out, my name isn't really ‘John Smith.’" Trying to keep the panic out of my voice, I turned the plastic casing over in my hands. Good. This would fit. Now, all I had to do was put the last of the screws in, and I would be ready to...  
  
But first, there were more pressing matters.  
  
Her mother, her arms folded in front of her chest, glared at me with red, tired eyes. She didn't look very good, but it wasn't her fault. Her daughter had been kidnapped.  
  
I readied the second-to-last screw, gripping the screwdriver awkwardly—the plastic screwdriver. My sonic screwdriver had disappeared, which irked me terribly. Not only was I sonic screwdriverless, but somebody in Japan was running about the place with a piece of potentially handy alien technology.  
  
"The things that took your daughter—they feed on psychic energy. Human beings don't usually give it off, not in the amounts they need to keep themselves awake, so I couldn't figure out why they'd stop here..." I twisted the screw a bit too much, and heard the plastic crack just slightly below it. Damn. Well, it'd hold for now.  
  
"But why did they take my daughter?"  
  
"Because she's psychic." Last screw, and this would be done. It had taken me too long to find a pocketwatch that wouldn't cost too much, but soon, very soon... "She's very psychic, actually. That's how she managed to figure out I was an alien as soon as she met me." She was also much wiser than she let on, I'd realized some time ago. Wiser and smarter. She’d probably known my name the first time we'd met, too, only calling me "John Smith" because that was what I'd told her mother.  
  
Well, that wasn't entirely correct. She actually called me “Jyon Sumisu.” Mind of a genius, body of a little girl, tongue included.  
  
"So...you really are an alien. I suspected, after those...what did you call them?"  
  
"I didn't call them anything. I just called them ‘radio wave aliens.’" There. Now, it was ready. "Look. These aliens that took her—they can sense psychic energy, so I'll be caught if I get anywhere nearby. Which is where this comes in."  
  
A homemade Chameleon Arch. It looked like an ungodly mishmash of plastic and metal, but if I'd put it together as well as I thought I had...  
  
"This will change my body into a normal human—and normal humans don't give out unusual amounts of psychic energy. So, I'll be able to get close, rescue your daughter, and skip back before sundown."  
  
Before she could get too optimistic, however, I continued:  
  
"But...it also has the side effect of transferring all my memories away to this pocketwatch. See? Usually I'd get replacement memories, too, but I’ll have to make due with what I've got here."  
  
"Why can't you just keep your memories?"  
  
"I'll explain later. Well, actually, I won't be able to explain later—it might kill me, if I did that. A little like connecting a very tiny lightbulb to a very powerful battery. No offense." I placed the device on my head. It fit snugly, of course. I'd measured my skull to make sure. "Alright, now, I'm counting on you to fill me in after this happens, okay? Tell me what I need to know—but as little as possible. If you let me know who I am too quick, we might have to do this whole thing again, and I don't want to risk it." I didn't mention that the Arch would probably be nothing but a melted puddle after one go at my head. Not my fault. Substandard materials. You couldn't build this sort of device in a mother's basement and expect it to work as well as the real thing. Though I supposed that depended on the mother. "Are you ready?" I hovered my finger over the switch that would make everything change.  
  
"Wait!"  
  
I stopped, just short of activating the Arch. "Yes?"  
  
She had a curious look on her face, something slingshotting between excitement and cautiousness. "Why are you doing all this? I mean, what do you get out of this? I'm glad you're rescuing my daughter, but you can't be doing this out of the goodness of your heart..."  
  
Just for a second, I felt very, very old.  
  
“As much as I hate to admit it, we don’t have the time to scrounge up a ragtag band of heroes," I answered. “Besides, rather than putting anyone else you know at risk—well, wouldn’t you rather it be me?”

And I was off.

* * *

 

I didn't understand at all.  
  
I didn't understand at all.  
  
The world faded in from darkness, and I knew pain.  
  
Opening my eyes had been a mistake. _That_ was what had set the pain off. It was an immense, nauseating pain, and it was everywhere. Or rather, I was everywhere, spread out impossibly thin over all of reality, my bones and muscles stretched torturously over years and years.  
  
That was what it felt like.  
  
It only lasted for a moment, but that moment was enough, and I was sick onto the floor.  
  
It was a nice floor, I thought vaguely as the last of the bile dripped from the corners of my lips. Wooden. Looked wooden, at least. It also absolutely refused to stay still, tipping dangerously in a circle as I tried to balance on my hands and knees.  
  
"Are you alright?" The woman peered down at me, concern on her face.  
  
I groaned.  
  
"Y—he said that you'd be sick," she said, worry evident in her voice. Crouching down, she placed a sheet of binder paper in front of me. "He told me—that you should read this. You have to read this."  
  
And then, having finished giving me her mysterious instructions, she left.  
  
The pain was gone (mostly), but just looking at the flowing script that filled up the page gave me the beginnings of a headache. 'He' had said that I had to read this? Who was 'he'?  
  
The smart thing, of course, would have been to find that woman and demand an explanation. Instead, I grabbed the paper and squinted at the writing as I picked myself off the floor.  
  
_Dear You,_ (it read.)  
  
'Dear You'?  
  
_You probably aren't feeling too well at the moment. I'm very sorry about that. It's partly my fault, and partly your fault. Next time you see me, you may dish out whatever punishment you think I deserve.  
_  
'Probably aren't feeling too well' was an understatement. That burst of pain at the beginning—that had been terrible. Horrible. At least it had been the worst of it (so far). Whoever was responsible for all of this—if he didn't have a very good reason for leaving me in this condition, I'd—I'd—  
  
I didn't know what I'd do.  
  
_However, more important things are at hand. Namely: Aliens have landed, and kidnapped The Girl.  
_  
'The Girl'?  
  
_I was able to disable their craft before they could take off, luckily enough. But I can't get close. If they see me, they'll execute The Girl, which would be  
_  
Would be what?  
  
But the paragraph ended right there, without of spot of ending punctuation. I skipped to the next line.  
  
_In other words: it's up to you, I'm afraid.  
_  
There was a rough drawing of something that looked like it might be an alien spaceship, and there was another drawing that looked like a floor plan, and there were drawings and diagrams and illustrations and tiny labeled arrows everywhere.  
  
I groaned again, and then a third time for good measure.

* * *

 

"Jyon! Jyon!"  
  
The letter had been useful. Dependable, in fact. Not only had there been an incredibly accurate floor plan of the alien spaceship included, but my mysterious benefactor had even traced the best route to take with red pen.  
  
And now...  
  
"Jyon!"  
  
There she was, strapped to that...strapped to that big...thingy. A really big thingy. And The Girl was strapped to it, about fifteen or twenty meters above the ground. It was something like a cage and a crucifix at the same time. What was it that the person who had written the letter had called it?  
  
I glanced down at the paper.  
  
That's right. A "biopsychic energy extricator". He'd made a rough sketch of it, even, though without the girl. Speaking of which--  
  
"Jyon! Jyon! Jyon, get me down!" The Girl looked a bit worried. No tears, or anything like that—she just looked a bit worried.  
  
"Um, right! Just sit still for a moment!" I yelled back, then consulted the paper again. According to what this guy had written, there was a button on the side of the Thingy that would get her down. All I had to do was push it...  
  
I did so, and with a loud humming noise, the Thingy (Girl included) descended to eye level.  
  
Easy! If the rest of the instructions were this simple, getting The Girl down would be a piece of cake!  
  
"Hello."  
  
The Girl opened her mouth, possibly to return my greeting, and then her eyes went wide and her mouth snapped shut as if someone had slapped her in the face. "Hey, you're empty!"  
  
What?  
  
"You're empty! You aren't Jyon at all!"  
  
I didn't know how to respond to that. "Well...I'm just following what's written on this." I looked back down at the paper for the next step.  
  
Apparently, in the back of the machine there was a removable panel. I just had to open that, and then flip a couple of switches in order to provide minimum biovoltage from the circuits, then disconnect a wire to disable the backup, and then pry out something that looked like a battery, put it in backwards, and reverse the polarity, then reroute the connections, then reconnect the wire and disconnect a different wire, and...  
  
This...was a bit more complicated, but I could do it. I followed the instructions the best that I could, double-checking the paper every second until I came to the final step:  
  
_Pull the biggest plug out and you'll be done.  
_  
So I did, getting it a swift yank that sent it flying away from the outlet. Funny, that aliens would have nearly the same sort of outlets, or even outlets at all.  
  
And then it was finished...  
  
And nothing happened.  
  
I blinked dully at the plug in my hand, and then up at the Thingy, and then at the plug again.  
  
Nothing continued to happen. I wondered if perhaps I had missed a step somewhere.  
  
"It doesn't seem to have worked," I stated apologetically to The Girl, and then I noticed her eyes glowing and my vision exploded.

* * *

 

"I win." The Girl's voice was cheerful.

It was also like a thousand thunderbolts and earthquakes going off all at once. It was the voice of a being who could scoop up all of humanity in a single hand and crush it without thinking twice.  
  
The restraints had fallen away. She'd demolished them, utterly—demolished the entire spaceship, utterly, with that impossible power that even now blazed forth from her eyes. All there was left over was an unrecognizable wreck.  
  
She floated in the blue sky, ignoring the crowd that had come to investigate the crash. And they were ignoring her, as well.  
  
No, that wasn't right. As crazy as it seemed, they couldn't see her at all. She floated in front of their faces, and they looked right through her, as if she weren’t there.  
  
Why could I see her, then?  
  
"'Cause I want you to."  
  
Ah.  
  
"But..." She tilted her head to the side as she looked down at me with a curious expression on her face, her eyes still glowing. It was unnerving, to say the least. "Why aren't you Jyon anymore, huh? Did you do something to your brain?"  
  
There was a feeling like cold fingers digging into my mind.  
  
"'Kay! That's okay then." Slowly but surely, her eyes began to lose the unnatural glow, and she floated downwards to the ground, landing gracefully as a dancer. Suddenly, she was once again nothing more than a normal girl. "But you—" She pointed at me, "You aren't Jyon anymore. So for now, you're Kyon, okay? That's Ki-yo-n. Kyon."  
  
No, it wasn't exactly "okay". Who gave her the right to just decide what my name was?  
  
She laughed. "You did, silly Kyon-nii!"  
  
Oh, right.  
  
Still laughing, she grabbed my hand and began to tug me in the direction of the house. "Kyon, let's go back home. Mom is prob'ly waiting for us, huh?"  
  
But what about the spaceship?  
  
"Don't worry! The Gover'ment's here to take care of stuff, see?" Indeed, a formal-looking group of men in camouflaged uniforms were beginning to push the crowd back. The government, huh? No doubt they would root through the remains for extraterrestrial technology and the such. It would do no good, however. It had all been destroyed. It had all been destroyed.  
  
"Yeah." I said. And then I allowed The Girl to lead me away.

* * *

Mikuru was still in the clubroom when I returned, facing away from the door, muttering to herself. Grinning, I walked quietly up behind her.  
  
Looking over her shoulder, I could see the device—what Mikuru used to travel through time. At least, I assumed it was the device. I'd never actually seen the device, so I couldn't be sure, after all, but odds were that this was it.  
  
I was going to feel very, very guilty about this afterwards, but...  
  
I took it.  
  
I took it, right out of her hands.  
  
Surprisingly, she didn't scream or become flustered or even turn around. She just stiffened, still staring straight ahead as she had been before I'd arrived.  
  
"Hey, Mikuru."  
  
At the sound of my voice, Mikuru relaxed, turning around slowly. "A-ah, Kyon...ha ha." She laughed awkwardly. "For a second, I thought...it's you, though."  
  
"Oh, yes, of course." I smiled cheerfully. "So, is this the time-fiddler you've been using? Not very aesthetic." Mikuru started in surprise as she noticed the device in my hands. "In fact, it's rather box-shaped. Though there's nothing wrong with boxes! I use something like a box myself."  
  
"K-Kyon, you're not...you're not supposed to see that, Kyon..." A note of panic entered Mikuru's voice.  
  
"Oh, don't worry. It's perfectly safe," I reassured her. "At least, I assume it's perfectly safe. It is perfectly safe, isn't it? Hold on, let me check." I pulled my sonic screwdriver out of my pocket and began checking the device for various pitfalls.  
  
"Kyon...what..."  
  
"Oh, this? Ha ha." I grinned. "This is my sonic screwdriver. Funny story, actually. Ever been the target of an ontological paradox?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"All done!" I put the sonic screwdriver away again and began pressing buttons. "Seems pretty easy to set where you want to go, I'll give you credit for that. By the way, you don't mind if I use this, do you?"  
  
"Kyon! What...what are you doing?" Finally, Mikuru began to muster up something like indignation. "You aren't...you aren't allowed to use that at all! I mean, I'm going to get in trouble...and...Kyon!"  
  
"By the way," I pressed a final button, and the device began to hum slightly. "it turns out I'm a time traveling alien esper. Just thought you should know, and such."  
  
Mikuru's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. She looked awfully like a goldfish.  
  
"I used to be a slider, too, but I'm not allowed to do that anymore. Well, are you ready? I'd like to make it back to my usual transport before dinnertime."  
  
"I don't...I don't understand..."  
  
I hooked my arm in hers before she could say any more, and for a second time the room spun sideways, and all I could hear in my ears was my own brilliant laughter.

* * *

It was some time after Tanabata and we arrived outside the house that had, for a short time, been home.  
  
"Here we are, good old two thousand and ten!" We'd arrived on a rather chilly morning. Nonetheless, it was nice to feel what little sunshine there was on my skin, especially after that detour to Nunavut (The problem with the Land of the Midnight Sun was that it was the land of the polar night as well, but nobody ever mentioned that).  
  
"It's November, by the way," I pointed out. "Sorry about that."  
  
"That's...that's four months..." Mikuru mumbled, half to me, half to herself.  
  
"Oh, trust me, you should be count yourself lucky it's only four months—"  
  
My words were suddenly cut off when the front door slammed open and a small girl attached itself to my leg.  
  
"Jyon!" The Girl cheered happily. "You came back!"  
  
"Well, I couldn't just leave without a proper goodbye, could I? Come on, give us a hug—oh, already are, never mind. Nobody's panicked too badly over us disappearing, I hope?"  
  
"Ah." The Girl stepped back, resting her hands behind her back, her voice low with facetious solemnity. "You two went mysteriously missing," she recited. "Police have no leads. It's a tragedy."  
  
"You hear that, Mikuru? I'm a regular Percy Fawcett!" I laughed, patting her on the shoulder friendlily.  
  
But now...  
  
"Mikuru." The seriousness of my voice caught her attention, and she looked up at me, startled. "Are you sure you want to stay here? I'm not limited to three years in the past, you know." Part of me wanted her to come. Another part hoped she wouldn't. So, I'd leave the decision to her.  
  
She didn't even hesitate before answering. "I...I have to stay here. To study Suzumiya...those are my orders." There was a bittersweet smile on her face. I knew what she was thinking—if things were only different, right? It was something I'd thought, many times in the past.  
  
But life was life, and you had to take the cards dealt you.  
  
"Well, that's too bad." And I was the smiling, joking Doctor once again. "I guess this is goodbye, then!" And then, pointing to The Girl: "I'm putting the responsibility of Haruhi in your hands. You think you can handle that?"  
  
"I dunno." A sly expression crept over her face. "Can I tell her you're an alien?"  
  
I laughed. "If you do something like that, she'll probably go raving mad. I don't recommend it." And with that final parting advice, I stepped into the TARDIS, closing the door behind me.  
  
Only to open it and step back out again. "Can you imagine what her face would look like?" I mused, grinning mischievously. "Hold on, I've definitely got to do this myself. Come on, you two, you're damage control."  
  
"Yay!"  
  
"Kyon! You can't--"  
  
We walked towards the school, the three of us: time traveler, esper, and time traveling esper.  
  
It really was a lovely morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone could tell me a way to change a metric ton of punctuation from plain to curly without going through the whole thing manually, I'd be damned grateful.


End file.
